A Breakfast Date on Broadway: Truman Capote's Classic Story Reborn on the Stage

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09 Mar 2013

Sean Mathias

Photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN

Holly Golightly, American literature's enigmatic party girl of Truman Capote's novella "Breakfast at Tiffany's," comes alive in a new memory-play adaptation by Richard Greenberg. The stars and director of the Broadway production talk about the iconic story of reinventing yourself — and finding your voice.

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It's Holly Golightly. But it's not the movie. It's the book.

That was the prevailing message from the cast and creatives of the current Broadway debut of Breakfast at Tiffany's, a new stage adaptation of the famous 1958 Truman Capote novella by playwright Richard Greenberg (Take Me Out, Three Days of Rain) , and mounted by the English director Sean Mathias. This is not Mathias' first experience staging the Capote piece, which tells of a mysterious, glamorous young escort who fascinates Fred, the story's narrator, and everyone else around her, with her free-living attitude toward life. In 2009, he directed a completely different version of the story on London's West End. That production, adapted by Samuel Anderson, starred Anna Friel and was poorly received.

"It landed on my desk in London about five years ago," said Mathias of the script. "I've had a relationship with Capote most of my adult life. I knew the film. When the title came to me, I thought, 'Why would I want to do that? It's such a great movie. It would be professional suicide.' But then I went straight back to this book and thought, 'Wow, this is such a beautiful book.'"